Every Half Heart Life I Have Lived
by Taneya
Summary: Kurosaki Ichigo is not the first name his soul has been called. He has lived many lives.  Warnings inside; not for the faint of heart or the easily-turned stomach.


Title: Every Half-Heart Life I Have Lived

Summary: Kurosaki Ichigo is not the first name his soul has been called. He has lived many lives.

Fandom: Bleach

Spoilers: One mention of Menos Grande.

Rating: M (mature)

Warnings: Contains rape, genocide, dutiful and passionate murder, polygamy, racism, insanity, child soldiers, child abuse/murder, war, slavery, death, death, death…

Pairings: Past lives x past lovers.

Note: This is somewhat based on Twenty Ways to Die in its idea and its telling, but these are all part of a single life and the stories are original. Check for the meanings of names at the bottom. One of the stories is based very closely on a side-story I vaguely remember from Inuyasha. Additionally, if you have complaints about timelines or historical accuracy or whatnot, it is because this story is a fine example of "Did Minimal Research".

"_I'm alive,_

_but a different kind of alive_

_than the way I used to be_."

–Okkervil River, "Starry Stairs"

~~/~~/~~/~~/~~

Obataiye is a strong man, in mind and spirit. He is a well respected as a warrior in his village and is feared as a demon by his foes, as his strength of body is well known and matched only by his strength of heart. He is a good husband, and a good father. He has never raped a woman, never beaten a child, but he still holds unquestioned authority in his family and in the village. Obataiye is strong.

However, he is nowhere near strong enough to endure the sight that meets him upon returning home after a hard hunt with the other men of the village. Obataiye returns home to see a group of men—no, beasts, the strange pale beasts that had come with their bad gods and dirty ways. The beasts are defiling two of his wives and three of his children. Obataiye does not pause to be properly horrified. Obataiye sees and lunges.

The strength in his fists is greater than the strength of the pale beasts' bones, he soon finds. Far greater. The first beast does not even see what ends him, absorbed as he is in raping Obataiye's third eldest daughter. The clean earth-color of his fist is splattered with the red beast-blood that sprays from the pale creature's face, and he does not stop.

As the pale beasts begin to look up and turn around to the disruption, Obataiye's elbow meets the neck of the beast hunched over his youngest wife. He grabs the head and twists to be sure of its death, then leaps at the beast withdrawing from his fifth son to obviously grasp for a weapon. Its hand is still a hands-length again from the gleaming death-stone on its thigh—Obataiye has seen them slay his people before—when Obataiye is upon it, crushing in the sharp angles of its face with all the strength of his arm and his rage.

Next is the beast backing away from the dirtied form of his favorite wife, who has given him many strong children. His body moves fluidly, like a hunting cat, as he grabs the pale beast's throat. It gives quickly under the strength of his fury, and Obataiye drops the empty shell of the beast on the floor without another thought for it. There is still the beast that was defiling his second youngest daughter, and the extra beast that is just now moving from its casual slouch to reach for its shining death-stone. Obataiye first moves for the beast that touched his daughter, and his knuckles cave in its brittle chest before Obataiye hears a loud, terrible noise and feels his chest grow heavy. Obataiye thinks it is rage, and turns to the final beast to see the broken form of his youngest son at its feet. His fist first plunges into its gut, which makes it wheeze, then into its throat, which makes it go silent. He kneels to pick up his son as the beast crumples to the floor, then turns around to see his ruined wives and children. He gathers them all together on the floor and holds them in his arms as blood flows down his chest, weeping at their empty eyes and the blood that still cools between their thighs.

There is the smell of sex, and now the smell of blood, and Obataiye knows he has failed in his duty.

~~/~~/~~/~~/~~

Miles reflects, as he stares up at the crying face of his death, that his name is unfitting.

He is born in relative poverty, which worsens in fact and multiplies in effect as he ages and requires more. More food, more education—he becomes part of the Hitler Youth Program. He has little choice. He has little objection, at the time. Only as he emerges from the youthful naivety of his adolescence and becomes one of the youngest-ever Nazi officers does he figure out that something isn't quite right about what he's doing.

He has one Jewish friend growing up. It is a secret, and it is dangerous, but Miles feels something close to love for Bernard and he hardly understands why this normal-seeming boy is supposed to be different from him.

When he is twenty-three, Miles kills Bernard as a test of his dedication to the cause. He almost fails—how can he kill Bernard, those _saukerle_, he'll tell them where they can stick their swastika—but Bernard smiles at him and tells him with his eyes _do it, it'll help you, and they'll kill me anyway_—and Miles pulls the trigger without realizing he has decided to do so.

Bernard even takes the care to put away his smile before he dies so the officers won't be suspicious of him. Bernard fits his name, certainly more than Miles does.

He has a strange acquaintance with a gypsy, as well, though Wendell insists they are called _roma_. He never tells Miles what it means, always trying to make him figure it out, but Miles never can. Wendell lingers in his life for two weeks, and Miles thinks he is again feeling something he guesses is love when Wendell is gone from him, danced away on the winds. Miles is left with a string of glass beads to remember him, which he throws away in his hurt and his anger. Later he regrets this act bitterly, and though he searches he does not succeed. He never again sees the beads, nor Wendell, and all that is left for him is a bitter longing that gnaws at him during silent nights and quiet mornings.

Miles is never very good at the ceremonies. He is good enough not to stand out from the rest, he can keep in place and keep his time, but no amount of mental scolding can make him believe in what he is being told. His arm raises to salute the Fuhrer, but it feels cold and heavy like lead and not like it is a part of him.

His blond hair marks him as a purer member of the Aryan race than the Fuhrer. If he is correct in what he says, why are blond, blue-eyed Miles and his fellows following this dark-haired man? Why does this furious little man with his spot of mustache so dearly want these people dead? Why does he say they are lesser people?

He grows fast, he learns fast, becomes an officer young, kills young, and dies young. His squad attacks a group of Jews holed up in an abandoned building, and they have underestimated their quarry. They realize it just too late, and as Miles shouts orders from the front—_leave_, you stupid lumps, _run_—he lays down fire with his handgun to give his officers time to escape. He shoots down half a dozen Jews, including a child no older than ten. The child is not an accident, although Miles dearly wishes it so. He does not think, merely sees a human face—a _Jewish_ face, with its dark curls—and shoots. He hits the target he aims for. He is trained to do so, he is ordered to do so, but he knows he is not right to do so.

Most of his officers escape. Stupid though they are, unable to think for themselves though they are, their survival is a testament to Miles' success and ability, and he is glad for it. Miles has always been a good commander.

Miles and his second-in-command, Roger, are tackled and trussed up like pigs. A man who introduces himself as Sigmund tells Miles he is the father of the child Miles has just shot. Tears flow down his face, but his hand and his voice are steady. Miles acknowledges him with a slow, small nod. Sigmund points his gun quickly at Roger, and without any jeering or torment or shooting of non-vital places puts a bullet in his forehead. Roger feels no pain.

Sigmund takes three steps, stands over Miles, and points the gun at Miles' pale, clean forehead, so unlike Sigmund's own dark, dirt-smudged brow. Miles does not beg. He does not pray to God. It does not occur to him to do so.

Miles reflects for a moment, staring into the dark, infinite chamber of Sigmund's gun. As he sees Sigmund's finger pull back the trigger in a moment that is only long through Miles' eyes, he decides that their parents really should have consulted each other before deciding to give the boys each other's names.

~~/~~/~~/~~/~~

He is hardly a baby, he is without a name, he isn't even human yet, and he dies without taking a single breath. His skin is wrinkled like that of an old man's.

His mother, as she lets her husband take the thing away to bury, reflects that this one looks rather close to how it should. It is just a bit undercooked.

~~/~~/~~/~~/~~

Her sister is beautiful, as always. Anna is always beautiful.

Just once, Emma wishes she could be beautiful, too.

Even when Anna is slain by an obsessive stalker, and the rest of her family weeps, Emma is envious. She is enough of a woman to admit it to herself. She is not a good enough sister to hate herself for it.

When they put the rope around her neck, chattering in the background about "…the murder of Miss Angelina Thompson, Miss Clair Duvoux, Mrs. Agatha Prescott, Miss…" she can only think how ungainly the coarse loop must look around her pale neck. She wishes they would use black cord, or something more elegant. Executions didn't have to be ugly. After all, Emma had been kind enough to make every one of those women's deaths beautiful. She hadn't marred them more than necessary to kill them. They would never grow old and ugly; their souls would have their beautiful looks forever. They should thank her.

"Miss Emmeline Johnson is hereby sentenced to hang by the neck until dead, by the order of…"

Emma can hardly care less about their posturing. Just kill her already and be done with it, please. This is getting unbearably boring.

"Yes, yes, can we hasten the proceedings? My sister Annabelle awaits my arrival, and I have kept her in such a state quite long enough. Give me my short drop and sudden stop, Sir Executioner! Oh my, but you're an ugly brute, aren't you? Couldn't you have someone more pleasant in the face take my life? Really, this is cruel and unusual punishme—"

Her feet dangle, and they are small and pretty even with the dirt that dusts the soles.

~~/~~/~~/~~/~~

The song is a difficult one, but one he must learn so he can play it for her before consumption takes her from him. So he practices.

He practices even though he can barely see the keys anymore.

He practices even though he cannot read the music sheets.

He practices even when the blood dribbling out of his mouth makes the keys slick, and it is hard to press them down at the correct speed.

He practices even though his fingers break.

He practices even though his skin dries, and breaks.

He practices even though they tell him to stop, even in the air when they pull him away from the piano.

He practices even when they tell him she is already dead.

He practices even though he is already perfect.

~~/~~/~~/~~/~~

He dies at Hiroshima.

He dies there, even though he is not there while the blast happens. He dies there when he goes to help. He dies there even though his body comes back to his wife and she tries to hold him in her arms. There is nothing for her to hold, though she thinks there might be if she just keeps him long enough by her side.

He dies there, because

They beg for water as their skin falls away.

They grasp at him when he gets too close, with fingers that are mostly bone.

They moan at him when he picks them up and treats them like corpses—it's only a small matter of time until they are.

They stumble into the fires and he does not try to stop them.

There are piles of them in the wells, naked and pale and burnt, and they remind him of maggots.

They float in the river, and he fishes them out like they are no more than the green stuff that floats atop the river at home.

Four children toddle after him as he carries their mother's soon-to-be corpse away. Two of them stumble and fall on their faces, and he does not turn back for them. Neither do the other children.

They beg for water, and when he tells them it will only kill them faster, they beg more fervently.

They beg for water, and when he tells them he does not have any for them, they say he can urinate, can't he?

A teenage girl who does not look terribly injured follows him to and fro for nearly three hours without saying a word, then falls over dead.

He is told to help prepare the funeral pyre even while there are still living people waiting to be rescued. He is reminded that even if they are found, the pyre will soon benefit most of them anyway.

His hands are black after twenty minutes of work, and when he tries to wash them in the river he almost puts them in a corpse's silently screaming mouth.

He doesn't think that the smell of burnt flesh will ever leave his nose, and worse, he thinks it will never leave his skin. He thinks this place is going to follow him forever, wherever he goes.

Most of them are naked to some degree, but it still feels more violating to look at their exposed muscle and bone than their exposed skin.

There is more than one incident where he suddenly realizes he is stepping in someone's open chest. Once he realizes this as the person gasps and dies.

He works hard, and he of course becomes thirsty, and he drinks guilty sips as their pleading for the stuff rings in his hears.

Some of them don't let him pick them up, some of them babble and try to hit him and then call after him when he walks away.

He finds quite a few limbs and other human parts that are not attached to anything else.

His knees tremble when he arrives, and he cries in horror, but the longer he's there the steadier his knees get. After two hours there he forgets what it feels like to cry. He is not sure if he should miss the feeling.

He finds a woman half-buried under the remains of her house, trying to hand him an obviously dead child and begging him to take care of it. It is early on in his time there, so he takes the child and cradles it in his arms until it's out of her sight, at which point he holds it as far away from himself as possible.

He cuts and bruises his hands and his legs on rubble until he feels like _he_ will soon need rescuing, but he continues because he knows that until he dies himself, he must.

He gets so covered in soot and dirt and blood and—and he soon looks more like a specter than a human being, but they still call out to him for rescue.

He hears them calling for help before he even comes into their sight. He knows they couldn't have heard him coming, not over their own screaming.

He soon learns the difference between those he should walk past and those he should walk to.

The air is foul, and poisonous, and they cannot wait for it to clear to start searching.

Occasionally he sees another rescuer walking through the wreckage, and neither of them makes any attempt to meet the other's eyes.

He dies there because even after he leaves, even after his job is done, he still hears them begging for water.

He drinks sake as his hair falls out.

~~/~~/~~/~~/~~

Sure, she's bleeding to death at the foot of the stairs, but the would-be kidnapper is dead in the living room and her husband and infant daughter are safe upstairs. Her husband is a good father; she knows she doesn't have to worry about that. She would be a good mother, too, if she lived. She can tell herself that help will come soon, that she will survive this, but part of what would make her a good mother would also make her a bad politician. She is very, very honest, and she will not lie to herself. She knows she is dying.

It is too bad she no longer has the strength to crawl to the armchair where she left her book. She might have just enough time to read to the end.

~~/~~/~~/~~/~~

Her own stories eat her alive. She has written a story about that, once.

~~/~~/~~/~~/~~

He is buried alive. He is to become a living god. It is supposed to be an honor, and before he got down here and realized the reality of it, it gave him joy.

He is supposed to ring his bell until he dies, so they can mark the time when he passes. He puts down his bell early out of spite and lets them think him dead before he has finished the proper amount of time required to become a living god and watch over them. He needs to stay alive seven hours longer to meet the required time.

He lives for another day and a half.

~~/~~/~~/~~/~~

The car doesn't surprise her. She sees it coming—fast—and swerves to avoid it.

It is the truck that gets her.

The vehicle comes roaring out of the darkness, one of its lights broken, and at first she sees the single light and thinks it is a motorcycle. Then it comes closer, and she _hears_ it, and in her head are the words _Oh. Shit._

She thinks, at the speed it is going, she will die almost instantly when it makes contact with her car. This does not happen.

She dies seconds after the truck hits her car, and for six of those she is trying to scream in agony and failing and maybe there is whiplash involved and the next two seconds are a haze. In the ninth second she dies, and in the tenth her soul makes a rude gesture at the truck.

~~/~~/~~/~~/~~

Laura loves them with all of her heart. Every breath she takes is for their sake; every drop of blood she stains her hands with is spilled without remorse because she knows it is for their safety and happiness. Through luck, perseverance, the kindness of strangers, and perhaps the will of God (though she doubts this last) she escaped from slavery and traveled north. The Fugitive Slave Law tears Laura's hopes from her, and as the southern men surround them, she remembers how dearly she loves her children.

So she kills them.

They are going to be enslaved, which would be intolerable. Unacceptable in all respects.

Laura slays all three of her children before they can stop her, and the shackles do not feel heavy on her wrists. She has born greater weights, but she will not again. Tonight, she will deliver her own wrists deadly kisses, and her teeth will meet with blood.

Laura wishes she could see their faces when their eyes meet her in the morning.

~~/~~/~~/~~/~~

He is born the son of a politician, and is raised in his famous father's likeness. He is smart and cunning, underhanded and a consummate actor, born to old money and a carefully trained thief. He is everything he needs to be to bend the laws of society and the minds of the masses to his will.

He does not hold back.

He dies of liver failure at the age of eighty-two, in his bed, attended by his valet. He has two children, three grandchildren, and has outlived every one of his four ex-wives. He has much to regret in his life, for by most moral standards he has lived a terrible one.

He closes his eyes without hesitance and dies with a faint smile on his face.

~~/~~/~~/~~/~~

The river rushes, and Helen knows it is a fool's errand, but she has lived her life doing such. She has never failed before. She has not lived a man's life and endured so much trouble and so much uncomfortable underwear to fail now. Snowshoe's legs are strong, and he is a fine stallion. She is confident he can make the jump. Helen will deliver her message, and the war will end decisively.

Snowshoe makes the jump, but the rushing river has weakened the banks that hold it in. The mud gives beneath them almost like it isn't there at all, and she and her steed tumble back into the river.

Snowshoe survives, as does the message in its special packaging, but Helen doesn't. Without her will to guide his path, Snowshoe wanders through the wilderness, his vital cargo losing its value with each passing hour it goes undelivered.

The war rages on for weeks as Helen curses at the river and yanks on the chain protruding from her chest in frustration. When the chain runs out and one weak tug pulls the grounding from her chest, she looks down and curses again before her body explodes and reforms on the battlefield.

She eats the soul of her commanding officer, the enemy's general, and a little over forty foot soldiers.

Two years later she is stepped on by a Menos Grande, and she's recycled through the loop again.

~~/~~/~~/~~/~~

Jonathan would have been a terrible king. He does not get the opportunity to be so, however, as he is fed foxglove by a slow nursemaid when he is two.

He does have the chance to be a terrible shinigami, and is "accidentally" killed by his own team leader on a training mission.

His death is unquestioned, and he is not missed.

~~/~~/~~/~~/~~

She thought that the people in white were pretty stupid. They spoke utter gibberish, and they made her eat things that didn't taste good. Why would you eat something green, anyway? Green was grass, which was for sleeping on.

She thought that the white padding of her room looked like marshmallow. Therefore, it should be marshmallow. The people in white would never let her eat it though. They fed her green stuff instead.

She thought the man that came to see her every night was named Mr. Teddy. She thought that the way he touched her wasn't really comfortable, and wasn't really right.

She was right about the last.

~~/~~/~~/~~/~~

It is the marvelous age of alchemy. She is one of the best.

It is her most ambitious project to date.

Seventeen pieces of paper.

Four flowers, two of them tulips. Another is a sunflower and the last looks like it might have been carnivorous during its lifetime.

Nine bottles of high-quality wine.

Three yards of silk.

Twenty sticks of chalk, in white and red.

Two test tubes filled with carbon.

Three boulders that each weigh slightly over thirty kilograms. Two are sedimentary, one is igneous.

Twenty-seven years of research.

All the surplus money earned in that time that did not go to food, board, clothes, or other necessities.

The experiment is a resounding failure.

Looking at the apparatus—which is unchanged, as it should _not_ be—she blinks, shrugs, and writes down in her notes the words _Inconclusive results._ Then she picks up another notebook, and checks off the third entry in the column.

She removes a thick volume from the table and begins her research again.

~~/~~/~~/~~/~~

The words freeze as he speaks them, and they fall to the ground to join the rest of the unending ice. The other man smirks at him—he knows this, even though every inch of skin that can be is swathed with furs—and then he joins the words on the ground.

He freezes to death when anywhere else he would have _bled_ to reach that end with his wounds, but here it is too cold. It's always too cold.

When his soul stands up and looks at the other man—who is already walking away—he still feels cold, which he finds unfair in all ways.

~~/~~/~~/~~/~~

She's killed five children so far today. She's also killed forty-two adults and about eleven individuals that she would consider somewhere in the middle. It's her job, though, so apparently it's excusable. She doesn't notice any special disquiet within her when she notices she's killed children, although she knows she should. At her shoulder is a boy who won't start shaving for at least another three years yet, if he even lives to tomorrow. Hell, she'll be pleasantly (unpleasantly? Neither of them deserve to live anymore) surprised if the two of them make it to sundown.

War is a terribly ugly business. It is dehumanizing, and it is far-reaching. Everything she once valued about herself as a moral human being has been stripped from her. She only has the most basic set of values left, crafted for battle and for death.

The first, and most faithfully followed: Kill quickly. Do not wound; always aim for death.

The second coincides with the first: Kill any survivors you find. Do not take prisoners to be tortured.

The third, the same principle: If one of your own is injured, kill them. Even if you have to make it look like an accident or the work of an enemy's hand, if it is more than a minor flesh wound the only right thing to do is kill them. They will not survive, and they will not want to.

The fourth, everyone learns on their own before anyone else has to tell them: Do not bother with the bodies of the dead. Loot them if you must, but don't abuse them, both for the same reason—they are only empty flesh, and they cannot offend you or take offense. There is no point in pointless aggression or reverence. They are only dead.

The fifth, and the one people who wear civvies don't even think of: Use every advantage available to you. Use sneak attacks. Use explosives. Use really, really _mean_ guns. Use hostages. Use bait, and lies. Use nasty tactics like interfering with supply deliveries, fouling water reserves, attacking in the night. Not all is fair and love and war, but to not use all that is available in war is stupid. And she and her comrades are not fools; neither is the enemy. They have all been fighting too long to heed anything so stupid as honor.

The boy at her shoulder collapses onto her lap; he is dead one-and-a-half seconds later. His blood is making her legs sticky—as her own blood does every month. She is a woman, he is a boy, they are both soldiers, and she has killed six children so far today.

~~/~~/~~/~~/~~

Kurosaki Ichigo tightens his grip on his sword, narrows his eyes as **power** _roars_ through him—he has the strength to do _anything_—and blood washes over his hands yet again.

~~/~~/~~/~~/~~

Author's notes:

Obataiye = "king of the world"

-Miles = "merciful"

-Bernard = "brave as a bear"

-Wendell = "wanderer"

-Sigmund = "victorious protector"

_saukerle_ = pigs, bastards

_roma_ = human

_"There is nothing either good nor bad, but thinking makes it so."_

_William Shakespeare_


End file.
